Nov. 4: Pledge Drive 2011: a retrospective of stories and music this year on the program

Friday kicked off this year’s pledge drive program with a goal of $30,000.00. I can’t say enough how important CJAM in particular and campus community radio in general are to the fabric of this community. Reaching this monetary goal will go a long way to allowing the station to increase power output so we can reach more people with a better signal. So on Friday we did our part to bring in some pledges and get more people excited about what we do at CJAM. Besides money there is a need for volunteers to do all kinds of things around the studio – from re-shelving cds to recording PSAs to making a pitch for your own program.

What I’ve done is put together a few clips of interviews and music guests we’ve had on during the year. We’ve maintained a blog for the program going back to Sept. 3 2009 and looking back you can see the evolution of the program from humble scratchings on a cave wall to the slick multi-media production it is today – just kidding – but we have come a long way and certainly it has been a privilege to bring as many interesting voices to your attention as possible.

For example, on Jan 7, I spoke to Jae Muzzin about his plans for a Radical History Conference planned for February:

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On Feb 11 Nusrat Rahman and I had a really moving conversation with Rev Colin Smith, pastor of Sandwich First Baptist Church. The conversation was during Black History Month and Rev Smith spoke on the church’s connection to the Underground Railroad:

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On May 6 I spoke to local lawyer and activist Victoria Cross about the recent Supreme Court ruling that denied farm workers the right to organize unions:

June 24th seems so long ago as November settles in and that day Windsor native Anna Atkinson came into the studio to play and sing “Mooniture” from her new cd of the same name. That evening she performed at MacKenzie Hall, and was also appearing in the Stratford production of The Grapes of Wrath:

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On July 1 Michael Skinner, a researcher with the York Centre for International Security Studies, spoke to us about the Afghan detainee report that had been recently released:

On July 29th local artist Rayven Howard came in to the studio to play a couple of her own compositions and that was thanks to Victoria Townsend who heard Rayven play at Taloola’s and asked her if she’d like to come on the program:

Prof. Robert Jensen, who teaches journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of several books including Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, and All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice. He spoke to us on Aug 26 about his ideas expressed in an article he wrote entitled: “Nature Bats Last: Notes on revolution and resistance, revelation and redemption”:

Since October 15th we’ve been talking about the Occupy movement that is still growing around the world and also in Windsor and Detroit. On Oct 21st I spoke to Destiny Turnboe and Joe McGuire in Detroit to get an idea of things there, and popular CJAM host Chris Crossroads, who also has been involved in the Occupy Windsor and Detroit actions, came in to the studio to sing an anthem he wrote using an old marching tune set to his words: